New drugs to squash spread of malaria

Malaria is a devastating disease, with 247 million cases and 619,000 deaths reported in 2021 alone. Malaria causes fever and a flu-like illness that occurs when people are infected with the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which is spread by mosquitoes. Drugs to treat malaria symptoms and insecticides to kill malaria-spreading mosquitoes have improved in recent decades, but the parasite and the mosquitoes are evolving to become resistant to these strategies.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for new antimalarial drugs, Play and win chess and a key goal is to prevent parasite spread by blocking their passage from human to mosquito, something that depends on the sexual phase of the parasite life cycle.

The Baum laboratory along with colleagues at Imperial College London, United Kingdom (UK) previously identified a new class of potent antimalarial compounds, belonging to a family of sulphonamides. These compounds kill the parasite only when it is in a specific sexual phase of its life cycle, Horse Betting Odds rapidly stopping it from being able to infect a mosquito and, therefore, preventing any subsequent human infection.

In their new Disease Models & Mechanisms article, Baum and colleagues explored exactly how these compounds work, which is an essential step before the compounds can be developed for testing in patients.sports betting  The lead author of the work, Dr. Sabrina Yahiya, commented “targeting parasite transmission from human to mosquito and back again is pivotal if we hope to reach the goal of worldwide malaria elimination. If you only treat one symptomatic patient, you address their symptoms but neglect the issue of malaria spread. By limiting transmission, however, you can radically curtail the spread of malaria across a population.”

The team began by growing human red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite in the lab, then manipulated the parasites to enter their sexual life stage. The scientists then treated these parasites with one of the sulphonamide compounds to find out which parasite proteins were being targeted by the transmission-blocking compounds. To do so, the scientists applied ‘click chemistry’, an approach that won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to attach a chemical label to the sulphonamide compounds. sure virtual betting This label would then tag any parasite proteins that came in contact with them. This technique identified a parasitic protein called Pfs16 as forming the strongest bond with drug.

Interestingly, Play Chess Bet Games and Win Big! Pfs16 is important for sexual conversion of the malaria parasite. The team then performed additional experiments to confirm that the sulphonamides bind Pfs16 and, importantly, block its function.